Houston, TX to Austin, TX
On $78,000 in Houston, with rent at $1,325, you keep $3,947 a month once tax and rent are out. The same job in Austin typically pays $86,000; at $1,550 rent that leaves $4,191.
Your numbers, not these ones
Where you are
No state income tax
Where you're thinking
No state income tax
Houston
$6,500 gross
Left each month
$3,947
Austin
$7,167 gross
Left each month
$4,191
On these numbers
+$244a month
Roughly $2,928a year more, assuming your habits don’t change. To come out level in Austin at $1,550 rent, the salary works out to about $82,000.
An estimate, not advice. Single filer, standard deduction, 2026federal brackets and 7.65% payroll; state rates are approximate effective rates. Rents are HUD Fair Market Rents for a one-bedroom (FY2026) — the 40th percentile of gross rent, utilities included — and pay is scaled by each metro’s all-occupations mean wage from the BLS (OEWS, May 2025). Both are measured for the whole metro, not your neighbourhood or your job. Your actual position depends on your filing status, deductions, benefits and local taxes. Check real listings and a tax professional before you decide anything.
The difference, taken apart
| What moves | Effect on what you keep each month |
|---|---|
| Gross pay$7,167 against $6,500 a month | +$667 |
| Federal tax and payroll$1,426 against $1,228 | −$198 |
| State income taxneither state charges it | $0 |
| Rent$1,550 against $1,325 | −$225 |
| Left each month, Austin against Houston | +$244 |
Four things move between Houston and Austin, and they do not move together. Pay is the largest of them here: worth $469 a month in your favour.
Both ends went up. Austin pays more for the same job, $86,000 against $78,000, and charges more to live there, $1,550 against $1,325. A bigger offer is not the answer to the question on its own; which of the two grew faster is.
Neither Texas nor Texas taxes income. That takes the loudest argument for this move off the table before it starts — this one is decided by rent and by what the job pays, and by nothing else on your payslip.
Those are approximate effective rates for a single filer on a middle income in 2026, not top brackets, and they ignore city and county taxes. Houston and Austin may both charge you something local that is not counted here.
Rent goes up, not down: about $1,550 in Austin against $1,325 in Houston, $225 more a month. That is $2,700 a year the new job has to cover before anything else about the move is worth discussing.
Both figures are HUD Fair Market Rents for a one-bedroom, FY2026 — the 40th percentile of gross rent with utilities in it, so four in ten one-bedrooms in each metro go for less. They are measured across the whole metro, which means a suburb carries its metro's number. A search on any listings site for the neighbourhoods you would actually live in will still beat them, and it takes ten minutes.
The same work pays about 10% more in Austin: $86,000 against $78,000. A bigger number is the easiest thing in a move to be pleased about and the least reliable — what it buys after tax and rent is the figure at the top of this page.
Both figures are bands, not offers: a salary scaled by each metro's all-occupations mean wage from the BLS, May 2025. That measures every job in the metro rather than yours, so it tells you what the local market pays in general, not what you would be offered. The $78,000 this page opens on is a typical salary for Houston and it is almost certainly not yours — put your own into the calculator above and the whole comparison re-runs on it.
It is about 150 miles between them. Nothing above counts what the move itself costs: the truck, the deposit, the overlap in rent, the weeks between the last paycheque and the first one.
Nor does it count sales tax, property tax, car insurance, utilities, childcare or health cover, all of which move between Texas and Texas. The figures here are federal tax, payroll, state income tax and rent — the four that decide most of it, and the four that can be computed rather than guessed.
Austin only has to pay $82,000 a year for you to break even, and the job typically pays $86,000 — clearing that bar by $4,000.
Which makes $82,000 the floor, not the target. An offer under it costs you money however good the city looks on a Sunday, and that is the one line worth holding.
The floor
$82,000a year
What Austin has to pay for you to break even. The typical $86,000 already clears it by $4,000; anything below it is a pay cut wearing a nicer skyline.
An estimate, not advice. Single filer, standard deduction, 2026 federal brackets and 7.65% payroll; state rates are approximate effective rates and rents are typical one-bedroom asking prices. Salary bands are scaled from a national baseline by what the same job tends to pay in each metro. Your actual position depends on your filing status, deductions, benefits and local taxes. Check real listings and a tax professional before you decide anything.